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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Water Play for Infants

It's never to early to start water play with your infant.

Water play is great for your child's physical, mental, and social-emotional growth and there is no right or wrong way to play.

I used a regular trash bag for this and just taped the end closed with duck tape. I did this inside so I didn't add food coloring for fear of explosion all over my carpet. This worked fine but next time I will use a thicker plastic to be on the safe side! My 4 month old loved loved loved this!

So happy!

Visual Stimulation

Colored water with mirrors.

Wow!

Another alternative when they start to grasp bigger objects. Fill up small jars that they can hold/shake. Great for increasing vocabulary and color recognition.

"Oh, you have the green jar! You're shaking it... that looks like fun! Do you hear the water swishing around?"

Water in balloons.

These are fun to hold and squish but we always like exploring new ways of playing. We poked some holes in the balloon and let the water squirt out on my youngest.

As you will see below all my girls loved this.

My youngest thought this was hilarious! I'm sure the water felt pretty funny to her.

My 25 month old squirting herself. LOL

Fill up a tub/baby pool up with a little bit of water. Let the splashing begin!

These next two pictures are actually my OLDEST. These are pre-pahm. See any resemblance??

Yes, it's scary how much they look alike. It's just like me and my sisters. I would love to have another. Not necessarily for a boy but we are all done. My husband wanted 2 and I wanted 4. We met in the middle.

this was a great post, thank you so much for posting! I'm going to have to try the colored bath, my DS loves the bath & that would just add so much fun to it! I was going to ask the same question, how do you color the bath water without coloring the baby?.. and an idea for the small jars to fill with colored water. You could use baby food jars (if you buy those from the store) and save them once the food is eaten!

Thank you so much for this and past posts. just want PAHMS to know that I've been learning from you for the past year, and couldn't have made it (mothering wise) when we recently moved back to our home country Iran. Just FYI, in case you didn't already know, Deb Curtis has another great book out, called "Learning together with young children." Same format as Desing for living and learning, but more focused on curricullum. Another great book I've found is Seven Times the Sun, goes a lot into rhythm and has a great chapter on personal renewal for all the energy it takes to be a good parent. Thanks again!

Oh my gosh, your oldest and youngest look EXACTLY alike! That is so funny and adorable! Love the water bag idea. Just wish my 22 month old wasn't such a picker/biter because I'm pretty sure she would pop it. :)